This summer we got our first look at EveryScape, a new startup that makes Google Street View look like child's play. But now that the company has launched a public beta, we have to say, we're not convinced Google has anything to worry about. Yet.
EveryScape certainly looks beautiful. 3D panoramas of real-life street views are stitched together from special photos taken atop EveryScape vehicles. Users can also submit their own photos to help flesh out details. At launch EveryScape has scenes from 4 cities: New York, Boston, Miami Beach, and Aspen.
You can click an Auto Drive button to take a guided tour of a city, or select "You Drive" to take control of the "wheel" yourself. There is also a nice directory of popular locations, including sightseeing spots, shopping, food and night life. In some locations, you can even click on an icon within the EveryScape interface to get a pop up button with more information.
But there's one big problem with EveryScape. It's slow. Really, really slow. Periodically during our test drive, a message would pop up telling us that the site was experiencing heavy traffic, which was affecting performance. So hopefully EveryScape is just experiencing growing pains. But while EveryScape provides much more detailed imagery and information than Google Street View (for selected locations), Google has a huge server farm which is capable of handling high traffic volumes.
